time slipping, head spinning
by Zayz
Summary: Will/Alicia. Alicia wrestles over whether or not Will loved her in the end.


A/N: Now, I didn't expect to write fic for TGW. Fic is for when you want something to go differently from canon, and I've loved TGW's canon pretty much every step of the way; writing fic seemed extraneous. But this time…well. I'm grieving, and I'm a miserable wreck, and this fic kinda just happened without any warning.

It's difficult to explain. It's kind of like a poem, kind of like a song, but it's still prose. I don't know. It's just grief – mine and Alicia's.

A quick formatting thing- there are going to be two counterpoints fighting it out in the story. You'll see it easily once you start reading. But because FFN is dumb, I can't format to the right for the second counterpoint, as I intended. It was meant to be left for one side, right for the other- but here they are both on the left. It would have made the center formatting that much more important and dramatic, but I'm letting you know because that's how I wanted it and FFN wouldn't let me. (If any of that even makes sense to you guys.)

Anyway, I hope you like it and that it doesn't make you cry.

* * *

time slipping, head spinning  
By: Zayz

* * *

There is a cacophony inside her aching heart—a great and terrible fugue, building up to a deafening roar that threatens to overwhelm her.

There is a cacophony inside her and it swallows her up into a whirl of crying and screaming and still, eerie silence, all of it too much to take and also too little to express the violence of what rages inside her.

There is a cacophony inside her, and she doesn't know how to make it stop.

* * *

It starts so innocently soft, a threadbare lullaby like a lone flute on a jagged, forgotten mountaintop, a plea in the dark like a spell she can whisper to magically convince herself—

_he loved you, he loved you  
i promise that he loved you.  
those final murmurings  
that no one could hear  
were your name,  
over and over and over again,  
an incantation to help him cross over.  
in the grip of this fear,  
he needed to remember being  
the happiest he ever was._

_he loved you, he loved you  
i promise that he loved you._

_the root of all his anger was love for you,  
love that did not die with him  
just because life is cruel  
and happenstance is crueler,  
shooting him down before he could tell you—_

_he. loved. you._

_he loved you so much that the world had to take him away,  
because people like him  
because love like yours  
is too passionate and honest and real  
for the swampland of cold, dishonest pretenders  
that call themselves lawyers  
in this small nasty town named chicago._

_he loved you, he loved you  
i promise that he loved you—  
loved you with his dying breaths._

he was going to call you back because he loved you.

* * *

And it's like permission to dream, permission to imagine herself in a pretty white dress – simple and elegant, clean lines and delicate lace – permission to pretend that he might one day slip a ring on her finger and promise her, til death do they part. Til they grew old and gray together, two more kids with her hair and his eyes, a bunch of tiny hollering grandchildren running around in the yard picking dandelions. Til they made a whole life, and exited it only when their bodies got tired.

The only thing that hurts more than losing him, is losing the future she still dared to hope for, one day. One day…

It's like she told him, once: it's only romantic because it didn't happen. They wouldn't have lasted long. They didn't even when they tried, because things get in the way, work and politics and ambition and family.

She'd said it coolly then, rationally. But she rings hollow like a bell, like something essential has been scooped out of her, remembering now, because now they'll never know. It didn't happen, and they never got a real shot, and only a fool would think that's romantic, because there's no glamour here, just pain. Pain that reminds her a little of childbirth: pain like nothing she had ever felt or imagined, that wrapped her up in its own hellish nightmare, gripped her tight and stole her sanity.

_he loved you, he loved you.  
he was going to call you back because he loved you._

Again and again and again – a haunting little melody to cling to, to thumb through like beads in a necklace, each one round and hard and warm with her sweat, in an endless loop, a respite from and an immersion into her bottomless grief—

_Helovedyouhelovedyouhelovedyou  
i promise that he loved you  
cross my heart and hope to die  
yes, die, because i am certain that  
he was going to call you back because he loved you._

* * *

But then, the counterpoint, the sinister cellos playing in a minor key, as she remembers, she remembers—

_he didn't love you,  
not anymore.  
his last words  
had nothing to do with you  
because there were a million things  
going through his mind that horrible day  
because he was dying  
because it wasn't fair  
because someone had to call his sisters  
because he was too afraid of crossing over  
to think of you._

_he didn't love you,  
not anymore._

_he thought you were poison,  
he hated you,  
he hated you for twisting his love  
into a personal and professional betrayal  
that erupted like a volcano  
and burned everyone alive,  
he said that word poison because—_

_he. didn't. love. you.  
not anymore._

_he did once,  
twice,  
when things really were less complicated  
when the timing wasn't so awful,  
but then he stopped  
because you chose  
peter  
and work  
and family  
and independence  
instead of him._

_he didn't love you,  
not anymore.  
he thought you were poison,  
and he was right._

_he was going to call you back because he wanted you to leave his clients alone._

Because that's the man she remembers, the one who called her poison. The one whose faith she destroyed by betraying him – no, by doing what she had to do. It wasn't personal, but he never understood that, he never knew, he never—

_he loved you, he loved you  
i promise that he loved you_

But he didn't.

He told her he didn't hate her, but he certainly did not love her.

He couldn't. She broke his heart.

She broke his heart, and she could never make him understand how sorry she was.

* * *

He's gone. He can't answer her questions, or accept her apologies, or kiss her his forgiveness. He's gone, and she can't reach him anymore.

She remembers how it was, once; she remembers how he used to kiss her and laugh softly against her teeth, the sound echoing through her bones, turning her body into a cathedral in which his subsequent chuckles and throaty grunts and ragged breaths bounced off the walls of her frame, collided with each other in the spaces between her ribs, and filled her up with the chaotic church-bell harmony of his love for her. He was the music that brought her cells to life.

But she's barren now. Her bones are still, no longer vibrating with the lingering force of his laughter. The cathedral only echoes a soul-rending loneliness, regret; she is only a home to ghosts. Ghosts of the time when she used to be happy.

The only melody left inside her is that question, the one with the cyclical and conflicting answers—

_his last words  
were your name—  
his dying wish._

he. loved. you.

his last words  
were pleas for help—  
he was afraid.

_you. were. poison._

_he loved you.  
i promise.  
he loved you._

_not anymore.  
you were poison.  
__not anymore._

* * *

She needs to know, and he can't tell her. She needs to know if he died loving her, as she will always love him. She's turning into a mad hatter, driven insane by the mystery no one will ever solve for her, ripping petals off mountains of daisies and muttering to herself.

Her eyes glaze over as people attempt to show her sympathy, and she pictures the flowers crushed in her fist.

Loves me, loves me not.  
Loves me, loves me not.  
Loves me, loves me not.  
Loves me…  
…loves me not.

_he loved you, he loved you  
i promise that he loved you._

_he didn't love you,  
not anymore._

It's pathetic and desperate and so very sad. She doesn't even know who she is anymore.

* * *

It doesn't feel real. Nothing feels real. She doesn't feel real. She has to keep checking her fingers and her hands and her beating heart to remember that she's real. And the fact that she has to do this scares her – no, terrifies her – because she's losing it, she's cracking up, she's losing it. She is still in shock, and yet some part of her has accepted the reality of the situation, and she can't decide which end is up. She goes through the motions of her day with astonishing dexterity, but none of it feels real, because she doesn't know how to live in a world in which he no longer exists.

She feels like she's losing him. Like water through her fingers, flowing as fast as she tries to hold her memories. She wants to be a video camera, every moment she ever knew him recorded for posterity – but she isn't, she isn't, and the film is flickering, and the details are fuzzy, and she's panicking, because she can't lose him. She can't lose him inside her head, too.

It's frightening, how blank her brain becomes, all at once – can't remember the way he said her name, can't remember where they went the last time they had lunch, can't remember the precise hazel of his eyes. The last one kills her, shatters her almost as much as that dreadful call – because how can she ever forget the eyes that used to look at her with such love, such warmth and genuine affection, that she blossomed when she thought she had nothing left to give?

She needs to remember him. She needs to bury herself into these memories and cling tightly to him because she can't go on without him.

She wants to remember the man that loved her, the one she loved too – the private one, whom no one else knew. She wants to remember the man that was her secret, the eternal flame from which she drew her light. The one who nuzzled her neck, and kissed her collarbone, and knew every inch of her body like it was home. The one whose pillow talk consisted substantially of case details, the one whose phone was always on and waiting on his bedside table, the one who thought it was funny to take a call, sound so serious and business-like with such a straight poker face, all while his fingers wandered into her most intimate skin and stroked her tenderly and then pinched her and made her scream into her pillow so that no one would hear her.

He could be so damn _cute,_ eyes like a basset hound, soft and mopey and sweet, but simultaneously smoldering and sexy, with an intensity that took her breath away. He was like water that way. Sometimes, he was gray and muted and soft, and other times vivid, full of color. Sometimes, he was murky and muddy and unreadable, and other times, she could see right through the shallows into his very heart, and she was sure the glimpse was only available to her. And sometimes, when the light was right, he was every color in the spectrum, and he was so in love with her that she could feel it radiate like heat from him to her, and their bodies fit together like the hand of God had made them for each other, and she wondered why she ever let herself be somebody else's wife.

And she wants to remember every detail, every tryst, every word he ever whispered in her ear – because they used to be so wildly, wondrously, deliriously happy, and those stolen moments are all she has left of that happiness.

Goodness knows she's never going to find it again.

* * *

Late at night, when the moon sleeps amidst its entourage fo stars, she wonders how he remembers – remembered – it. How he thought about her, if he did at all, on nights just like this one, beneath the same moon, breathing the same air that passes through her lungs right now. She wonders if he missed her sometimes.

Though pain is the last thing she would ever wish for him, she hopes that he did miss her – because that would mean he still loved her. Did he sit up late, working on a case at the desk in his office where no one sits, no one even looks anymore – did he get distracted thinking about her? Did he put his face in his hands and screw his eyes shut and visualize her face, remember how it felt to kiss her?

Did he ever wonder how she thought about him?

Did he think they had a chance?

Could he still have loved her?

* * *

_he loved you, he loved you  
he was going to call you back because he loved you._

_he didn't. he couldn't.  
he was going to call you back because he was mad at you._

_he loved you.  
he did.  
he had to._

_he didn't.  
he couldn't.  
he owed you nothing._

_he liked himself around you._

_you were poison._

* * *

_but i loved him!_

* * *

That last sentence – that final, most honest explosion that rent her heart and tore her throat and shot out into the air like a firework – finally releases itself in the form of a strangled screech into her bedroom two nights after he died.

Everyone in the apartment is asleep, so nobody hears her – but nobody else needed to. She hears it. She hears herself.

She loved him. She loved him enough to imagine a life with him, a future – one she could not fulfill, but one she nonetheless wanted, because she loved him, and it was real, and she loved him. She did. She does.

Even if he did not love her back, even if he could never forgive her, she loved him. She loves him.

That's the part she knows for sure is real, in all this chaos. She loves him.

This much rises above the din, the cacophony inside of her. She loved him – she loves him – and that is what she is going to remember. That is what she will never forget.

* * *

That's how the song, the fugue, will end for now – not on the original melody, a last-ditch prayer that he loved her, but on different ground. Solid ground.

She will ask him sometime, when it's her turn to leave this earth and go wherever it is that people go when they die. She will ask him whether or not he loved her, in the end, because she needs to know. She will badger him, and ruffle his hair, and clutch his hand in hers, and she will make him tell her honestly. But she can't think about it anymore. Not now.

She cannot be the mad hatter, yanking daisy petals and sinking into a whirlpool of despair. She cannot chase down a lead and interrogate someone in court and demand an answer, a settlement, a deal. She cannot let these songs in her head drown out her voice.

He loved her once. He hated her once. He wanted to call her back, but couldn't.

_he loved you,  
_she argues to herself.  
_he loved you so much.  
he couldn't hate you  
unless he loved you so much  
that his love mutated out of  
sheer protective necessity._

_it couldn't be like it was,  
_she cross-examines herself.  
_you can't go backwards.  
he was very angry  
for some very good reasons  
and he still needed time  
to work all that stuff out._

_but that's okay, because i loved him_,  
she closes, leaving the case in the hands of the jury,  
_i loved him very much and i think he knew that._

* * *

The fugue then concludes, a gentle denouement back into a respectful silence. A numb sort of peace settles in her inner landscape.

There will be more to grieve, more to mourn, more to cry for, she knows – but she loves him. That means something. That's something she can keep like a talisman, warm and bracing and real, in her pocket for the long road ahead.

* * *

A/N: All I ask is that you review before you leave, please!


End file.
